Dr. Ellen Frede

Ellen Frede, a developmental psychologist who specializes in early
childhood education for children from low income families or who have
disabilities, is an associate professor at The College of New Jersey. In
her capacity as project co-director of the New Jersey Early Intervention
System Study, she developed instrumentation to measure program practices
based on the DEC Recommended Practices and oversaw the data collection and
analyses in this area. Prior to this study, her most recent research
activity was Evaluation Director of the Newark Early Childhood Teacher
Training Project. The project, funded by the Prudential Foundation, was
designed to provide training that would enable centers to receive
Accreditation form the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs. In
addition to investigating the impact of the training on teacher beliefs
and classroom practices, the study also measured inner city parents' views
about Developmentally Appropriate Practices.

Formerly, a research assistant professor at the Rutgers University
Center for Policy Research in Education at the Eagleton Institute of
Politics, Dr. Frede was the principal investigator of a collaborative
statewide evaluation of early childhood inclusive programs funded by the
Massachusetts Department of Education. The project activities included:
1) a survey of all public school inclusive programs for young children, 2)
a training project to teach early childhood educators how to use program
evaluation to improve their programs and who in turn taught others to use
evaluation methods, 3) a field study of the impact on local practices of
state policies regarding inclusion, and 4) a field study of the factors
affecting quality of integrated preschool programs at the administrative,
parental and classroom levels. She also served as a consultant on a
Massachusetts Department of Education evaluation of the single
certification in early childhood and early childhood special education.
This entailed interviewing college faculty regarding the changes the
single certificate necessitated.

At the Early Intervention Research Institute at Utah State
University, Dr. Frede served as a Research and Evaluation Specialist. One
of her major tasks was the refinement of a system to validate treatment
implementation in early childhood special education programs which were
part of a national longitudinal study. Dr. Frede also conducted research
on the relationship of classroom quality to the later school success of
young children who attended a state wide preschool program for children
from low income families. She has designed numerous observation systems
for use in center based, home based, parent focused and child focused
programs. She has also developed protocols for interviewing program
personnel regarding transition procedures.

Dr. Frede began her career in early childhood education teaching
in child care centers while she attended college. As an undergraduate at
the Merrill Palmer Institute, she studied the double burden of being a
young child with disabilities in an urban setting. She has taught in Head
Start and in two Handicapped Children Early Education Project integrated
demonstration classrooms. At the High/Scope Foundation, she trained
teachers and teacher trainers in integrated and self contained classrooms
throughout the United States and abroad for Project Follow Through, the
Office of Special Education Outreach Project, the National Diffusion
Network, and private sources. She was one of the developers of the
High/Scope Training of Teacher Trainers Project and co taught the project
in the Los Angeles Head Start Program. Of major focus in the training she
conducted was the application of developmental theory to teaching children
who are at risk for school failure, and using observation to improve
instruction. Dr. Frede has had a strong interest in the importance of
working collaboratively with parents to increase the successes of their
children. In addition to numerous workshops and paper presentations on
working collaboratively with parents, she was funded by the Administration
for Children, Youth, and Families to write Getting Involved: Workshops for
Parents, a manual for parent specialists. Her research has been published
in The Journal of Early Intervention, The Early Childhood Research
Quarterly, and other journals related to early childhood care and
education.